15
Nov
Marching Band Humor
Spoilers:
"Boggis and Bunce and Bean, One short, one fat, one lean. These horrible crooks, so different in looks, were nonetheless equally mean."
Mr. Fox, Mrs. Fox, and all their fox babies live under a hill under a tree, along with Badger, Rabbit, Weasel, and all of their families. To make ends meet, every night, Mr. Fox steals a meal from one of the three crooked farmers--Boggis, a chicken farmer, Bunce, who has a little bit of everything but only eats duck liver, and Bean, who farms turkeys and apples and subsists solely on apple cider. With his keen sense of smell, and the farmers' distinctive diets, Mr. Fox has no problem evading them.
After so much treatment, the greedy farmers band together to end Mr. Fox. They ambush him at the base of his hole in the hill, and while Mr. Fox survives, his tail does not. Thus begins an obsession on the part of the farmers. They first try to dig the foxes out, but they are outdug by eight sets of paws. Then, they move to starving them out. This is unfortunate, as no other creatures living under the hill (though now more of a valley; a bulldozer was involved at one point) can get out, either. Mr. Fox is not a very popular figure until he chances across the idea of digging under the farmhouses...
Source
Starring:
George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Meryl Streep
Source
Rumors:
1. Trailer Park: Mr. Fox's Burning Hot Tub
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Director Wes Anderson uses old school stop-motion animation for this comedic tale of a band of animals with celebrity voices who must battle some angry farmers. Listen for the voices of George Clooney, Bill Murray and Meryl Streep among others. Things get foxy on November 13.
A Serious Man
Here's a trailer that understands what trailers are supposed to do: grab your attention and make you curious to see more. This black comedy directed by the Coen Brothers and set in 1967 concerns a college professor who is experiencing a professional dilemma and is on the verge of a divorce. This one goes into limited release on October 2.
I Sell the Dead
More than any other trailer I've seen lately this one has me dying to see the film right now. On the eve of his execution a nineteenth century grave robber tells the tale of his exploits unearthing the undead. Sadly, I will have to wait for the film's limited release on August 7.
Dorian Gray
Another in a long line of screen adaptations of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, the story of a man who achieves eternal youth. No U.S. release date yet.
The Burning Plain
A mother and daughter (Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger) struggle to rebuild their relationship. This one starts its limited release on September 17.
Tron Legacy
I was more a fan of the arcade game than the movie, but this long after the fact sequel to 1982's Tron is pretty spectacular. This will be out sometime in 2011.
Hot Tub Time Machine
If you do not love that title then you have no soul. The fourth dimensional waters start bubbling on February 26.
New on AOL Moviefone:
* Brothers - When a decorated marine goes missing overseas his brother cares for the wife and daughter he left behind.
* The Disappeared - A young man moves into his father's London apartment and begins hearing the voice of the little brother who mysteriously vanished years before.
* The Invention of Lying - Ricky Gervais stars as a man who discovers lying in a world where everyone tells the truth.
* Book of Blood - In this horror film based on a series of books by Clive Barker a medium becomes a conduit for souls on their way to the afterlife.
* Surviving Crooked Lake - Four teenage girls must survive a trek across the Canadian wilderness.
* World's Greatest Dad - Robin WIlliams stars in a dark comedy directed by Bobcat Goldthwait.
* Earth Days - Documentary about origins of Earth Day.
* Jennifer's Body - Diablo Cody wrote the script for this film in which Megan Fox plays a demonically posessed high school student.
Source
2. Old School Fantastic Mr. Fox’s Charming Old School Trailer
Now this looks nice. I’ve never even heard of the book until the trailer surfaced yesterday. It’s for Wes Anderson’s “The Fantastic Mr. Fox”, a stop-motion animated movie based on a novel by Roald Dahl, and it features a stellar A-list cast of George Clooney, Michael Gambon, Meryl Streep, Willem Dafoe, Helen McCrory, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman. Check out a trailer for it below. It’s hard to describe the movie, but the trailer does a good job of it.
Angry farmers, tired of sharing their chickens with a sly fox, look to get rid of their opponent and his family.
The fox outfoxes the humans November 13, 2009.
Source
3. What is With the Knee-Jerk Aggression Toward 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox'?
The opinion on the trailer for Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox seems to either be screams of delight or scowls of discontent. It seems as if it is just one more example of people forgetting completely about the story-telling aspect of movies and hoping the look fits into the nice little box they have in their mind, or at the very least matches up to everything else we see in theaters nowadays.
Over at Slash Film Russ Fischer says, "There are great little moments in here, mostly through dialogue, but the animation doesn't have me convinced. It looks very flat… That sense of creepy '60s/'70s television animation hasn't gone away, and the whole clip has a feeling of disconnection." Considering Fisher points out liking the dialogue, but got so caught up with concern over the animation has me a bit bewildered. I really don't see where "creepy" comes in or even "flat", but I guess his comparison to '60s/'70s television makes sense, but doesn't everyone love "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer"?
S.T. VanAirsdale at Movieline doesn't even wait to get to his text before lobbing a grenade via his "The Fantastic Mr. Fox Trailer: Who's to Blame For This?" headline, and while I am thankful his attack isn't aimed at the animation – or even the movie – he seems to be eviserating the trailer itself:
The movie itself may be great – just the right kind of risk-taking diversion Anderson's critics have been demanding all this time. Look at Mr. Fox's subtle slumping gesture when Badger cries out his expertise in explosives, and say Anderson and his animators weren't paying attention. But for everything that looks like it went into the film, how can 20th Century Fox not take the same meticulous care in cultivating its audience? I thought that was the point of trailers. (See: Serious Man, A) Sigh. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was anything but a letdown like this.
Christopher Campbell at Spout merely says he has "no interest in this thing after seeing the trailer" but doesn't give much of a reason before bringing in his cast of supporting links, outside of saying he's not "a big fan of stop-motion" and is "against huge stars being employed for voice work in animated films." The first reason I can give him, but are you really going to blame a film for employing big name actors? To each his own.
Katey Rich at Cinema Blend piles on the voice work saying the voices "don't particularly match the animal characters they're voicing." I guess this means George Clooney doesn't actually look like a fox, which I would have to agree with, he doesn't. I would also argue James Gandolfini doesn't match the monster Carol in Where the Wild Things Are, but then I would be assassinated by the online masses so I won't say that…
Mickey Pagels at The Playlist wonders if the movie "was made for the Wes Anderson fans or for the people that plan on seeing Aliens in the Attic this Friday." I guess there is no in-between on that one… perhaps people who enjoy good story-telling and aren't immediately concerned with whether or not this is specifically a Wes Anderson movie as much as they hope it simply is a good movie. Also, I'm sorry, but to say "Bill Murray sounds bored as does Owen Wilson" is looking at a trailer way, way, way too closely in my opinion.
Finally, there are a pair of comments on my own posting of the trailer with "Hohn C." saying, "Woww… this looks HORRIBLE," and Patricia saying, "Agreed. Wallace and Gromit made this look easy. But this is seriously awful."
Everyone has a right to their opinion, of course, and while some of the issues raised seem a little silly to me they aren't entirely invalid concerns, and don't bother me as much as the fact so many movie-lovers seem so quick to dismiss something merely for looking different. Especially when "different" is typically part of the online battle cry.
Looking back, I will quickly point to VanAirsdale's argument comparing a trailer for an R-rated film (A Serious Man) to what appears to be a PG-rated kid flick is preposterous. Perhaps the fanboys in the audience are also upset there aren't any giant CG robots or masked men in tights and will also quickly write this one off as well. How's that for keeping an open mind? Come on.
Glenn Kenny took another look at the VanAirsdale complaints and Campbell's round-up of negative publicity and posted on his blog:
The Loud Family's "Ballad Of How You Can All Shut Up" goes out to Movieline's S.T. Vanairsdale and Spout's Christopher Campbell, whose concern-trolling (no links) over the putatively underwhelming trailer for Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox isn't really anything more than very poorly disguised pre-emptive poking at a film that they're clearly dying to shit all over. The bad faith is palpable; you can practically hear the guys honing their boasts about how they helped "bring" the movie "down" that they can recite at all the corporate holiday parties they hope the recession won't be canceling. Really makes you love the internet even more than usual.
However, for the rest of the complaints I am actually quite shocked. If anything, the trailer previewed an animated film that looked nothing like any of the studio-driven animated films we have seen over the past several years. Considering we are talking about a group of movie bloggers that beg and demand originality it seems incredibly odd they would be so quick to pile on a film so obviously 100% unique when it comes to comparing to everything from the latest rash of CG features and even the recent stop-motion animated work of Henry Selick and Tim Burton.
Actually, Selick's Coraline (talk about creepy) is a perfect example of a film that looked amazing, but the story was incredibly weak. I think the animation in Fantastic Mr. Fox is a breath of fresh air in a medium that has nothing but a series of copycats hellbent on wowing us with visuals and – other than Pixar films – hardly determined to interest us with story. Hell, everything now also comes tagged with the gimmicky "In 3-D" tagline to which I was incredibly happy to see a good online friend in Vince Mancini at Film Drunk tackled in his posting of the Mr. Fox trailer:
A lot of the other movie sites out there are complaining about the animation looking "weird" or "flat", but I like that it's easy on the CGI and not 3D. 3D is particularly stupid. I like to be free to look at any part of the frame without getting a GD headache, and the screen looking like a pop-up book isn't a huge selling point for me. And if I wanted to wear glasses I would've been born a nerd. I don't want 3D, I don't want my chair shaking around, and I don't need an "immersive experience." How bout you just make a good movie and let me sit here with my nachos and stay outta my sh*t, eh hotshot?
Nope, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is not in 3-D. It's not a CG-driven film either. It doesn't even use motion-capture technology designed to revolutionize the history of cinema. However, it looks like it has compiled an incredible list of talented actors to voice what looks like a wholly unique animated experience with a story that looks like it could be a lot of fun.
Of course, I say this knowing full well the animation is all pretty much everyone is going to look at, completely dismiss and most likely turn this into a box-office failure as they go marching on to the Jeffrey Katzenberg CGI 3-D drum beat. At least, come November 13th, I have something unique to look forward to before the next 3-D CG motion-capture, knock-my-socks off with 70-foot tall movie screens assaults my senses and steals my soul. Will it be good? I don't know, but I am anxious to give it a try.
Here's the trailer one more time for those that didn't watch it at the opening of this post.
I would love to hear your thoughts. Am I crazy or hypocritical? Do you agree/disagree? I know this is a small round-up of opinions and there were a lot of positive comments in the Internet as well, but I pretty much focused on the negative because this seems like the kind of film to champion rather than put down at first sight.
Source
4. Furry first-look at The Fantastic Mr. Fox
20th Century Fox has dropped the trailer for The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson's stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's book. Yup, that would be the same Wes Anderson that brought us The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited. Can you imagine Anderson's sensibility translated into an animated film? On second thought, you don't need to imagine it 'cuz the trailer for it is right below:
Starring the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Willem Dafoe, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Brian Cox, Adrien Brody and Anjelica Huston, 20th Century Fox opens The Fantastic Mr. Fox on November 13.
Source
5. 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' trailer debuts to decidedly mixed buzz
During the entire production of "The Fantastic Mr. Fox," images have been on lockdown to such a degree that we didn't even have a basic idea of what the style of the film might be. When you say "stop-motion animation," that doesn't really have anything to do with the look of the film... it's just a technique.
The last two weeks have been sort of an avalanche of material about the film, though, including the debut of the first trailer, and the reaction has been diverse, to say the least.
If you haven't seen it, you should start with USA Today's photo gallery, which contains a fair bit of excellent reportage about who's playing what and how the film's been built.
I've heard from many friends who find the trailer almost unspeakably ugly, who hate the animation, and who think the movie stars overwhelm the piece. When my wife was pregnant, both times, I did a lot of reading to the tummy, and I particularly enjoyed reading Roald Dahl. There's something particularly juicy about the way he plays with words that makes those books fun to read aloud, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox was one of the books that we read more than once.
Yahoo! Movies got the trailer premiere, and now Fox Searchlight's released it through their YouTube channel as well:
[more, including trailer, after the jump]
You can mark me down in the "really liked what I saw" camp on this one. I love Clooney's voice for Mr. Fox, I love the wry sense of humor, I love the very low-tech look of the animation... it pushes the right buttons for me. It's the opposite of the slick studio animation we're used to seeing, and that's what I like about it.
It's just a quick glimpse, true. The finished film is still a big fat question mark. But for now, color me curious based on this first glimpse, and confused by the intense negative reactions of so many of my peers.
Can't get enough of Motion/Captured? Don't miss a post with daily HitFix Blog Alerts. Sign up now.
Don't miss out. Add Motion/Captured to your iGoogle, My Yahoo or My MSN experience by clicking here.
Not part of the HitFix Nation yet? Take 90 seconds and sign up today.
Source
Gallery:
> |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Video:
Bookmark it:
